


As I Fall to Pieces

by Lepidopterrain



Category: Batgirl (Comics), Batman - All Media Types, DCU
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Powers, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst, Cassandra Cain is a good friend, Chronic Illness, Chronic Pain, Coming of Age, Hurt/Comfort, Read at Your Own Risk, References to Depression, Stephanie Brown Needs a Hug, Stephanie Brown-centric, Tim Drake is a Good Friend, Unspecified Connective Tissue Disorder, no capes AU, no happy ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-09
Updated: 2021-03-08
Packaged: 2021-03-12 03:13:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,671
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28878540
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lepidopterrain/pseuds/Lepidopterrain
Summary: It started small, as large, dangerous things are wont to do.OrGotham is just a regular city in a regular world where heroes belong on the pages of comics and the screens of movie theaters. Steph is just a regular girl with regular problems. Except, of course, for the ever-present aches of her body.This is not a happy story. Read at your own risk.
Relationships: Stephanie Brown & Bruce Wayne, Stephanie Brown & Cassandra Cain, Stephanie Brown & Cassandra Cain & Tim Drake & Dick Grayson & Jason Todd & Damian Wayne, Stephanie Brown & Damian Wayne, Stephanie Brown & Dick Grayson, Stephanie Brown & Duke Thomas, Stephanie Brown & Jason Todd, Stephanie Brown & Tim Drake
Comments: 1
Kudos: 14





	1. Chapter 1

It started small, as large, dangerous things are wont to do. 

Steph can't remember it first happening. But she remembered being twelve in gym class, loathing the yearly jog-a-thons because of how her knees would ache for days afterwards, shooting pain in the hours immediately after making her long to sit and be still. 

She remembers mentioning it, offhandedly, to a boy in her class. It's a fancy school, some hoity toity private school she'd won a special scholarship too, and she hated being there with every fiber of her tiny being. She wasn't like the other kids, beautiful or genius level smart or rich. She was beginning to get acne and pimples and talked either too much or too little and always sat on chairs like she was ready to leap out of them or sat and _twitched_ in ways that irritated her teachers. 

So she really hadn't _meant_ to say anything to the boy with the blue eyes, but after he'd lapped her _again_ he'd slowed and checked on her, and it had slipped. And he had frowned and raced off and then the next time she passed the coaches she was pulled aside and looked over before her coach, the gym teacher, sighed and lectured her on acclimating herself to physical exercise. A little pain was no excuse to try to escape running laps.

Steph's cheeks burned, and she glared at the boy as he jogged past, eyes lingering curiously. After all, this wasn't anything she hadn't heard before. 

* * *

A year later, she still hates her school and most her classmates. They are still beautiful and untouchable in a way she will never be. 

But always by her side is that tattle-boy, eyes still blue and concerned when they try to race up the stairs after gym class and suddently, startlingly, her left hip gives out and she falls with terrified gasp as her heart skips a beat and she waits to tumble down the steps. 

But Tim doesn't let her fall, catching her wrists with big, terrified eyes before helping her scoop up the papers that have scattered all through the stairways now.

"I-I tripped," she lies for reasons she doesn't completely understand. But she knows, somehow, that he wouldn't understand if she'd told him the truth, that her body had been locking at the joints on cold days and giving out in ways that joints aren't meant to. 

"I know," Tim says, voice still shaking. "I've got you." 

He doesn't leave her side the rest of the way up the stairs, sticking by her as they're both scolded by the teachers for running late to math. 

* * *

She is glad to escape to high school. Its a small charter school, where she doesn't have to take gym and the focus are on the arts so she isn't the only one who takes it a bit slow when she goes up and down the stairs. 

Tim is, still, right next to her the whole way, although he goes to a different school. Something more prestigious, better befitting of him. She'd been accepted too, and had thought of it, thought of the swim team and of the college opportunities and her friend with the big blue eyes--

And then she'd been asked by Cassandra, with big brown eyes and an unexpected closeness that last year of middle school, not to be left alone and "Please Steph, I've never _had_ to go to a new school before or meet new people."

And Steph was, admittedly, a weak bitch. 

Tim understood, had been there to join in the chaos that was the three of them on the school yard. The three of them playing and tumbling about until Steph's knees and hips ached and then they'd sit in the sun and be still and quiet. 

A part of her longs for it, the stillness and the warmth of the hot summer sun on her joints, as she gets stuck in the library because the room is overly air conditioned and her knees have locked in place. It's painful and confusing and when she mentions it to adults she always gets told how she's too young to have "those sorts of problems" yet.

But that doesn't make them go away.

* * *

That winter is the first time her hands ache. 

It catches her off guard, one day, as she goes to grip a pen just for her hand to ache like she'd thrown a bad punch and the pen to go tumbling to the floor. Cass, bless her, leans over to grab it, eyes trailing quietly over Steph. But she doesn't ask, the same way she doesn't ask when Steph leans over into her side quietly after a long day because it hurts too much to hold herself up. 

It is the same way Cass leans into her in the mornings, as they sit there together and don't mention the bruises around her wrists or neck. The same way they sit together and don't talk as the court cases start, and they both get dark circles from nights staying awake (from stress, from homework and part-time work, from midnight texts _"what's changed?" "u good?" "come get me?"_ and all the words and conversations that feel to fragile to say out loud, and sneaking out to crawl into Tim's room where he's waiting up for them with hot cocoa mugs).

* * *

With the warmth of spring the ache fades, and Steph wonders if it was all in her head. 

But spring brings other changes as well. 

Spring brings court rulings and adoption papers, and a happy-yet-painful twinge in Steph's knees and hips as she helps move Cass's boxes into the room next to Tim's, because legally they're _both_ Waynes now, and isn't that just something? 

Steph had never really given much thought to Tim's adoptive father other than her general "eat the rich, instill anarchy, make a dog mayor" narative (gotta have those big life goals, after all). He was a very rich man, and they'd gotten along fine, each existing in the fringes of each other's lives. But he'd known what Cass had meant to them, wasn't willing to let her go into the uncertainty of the foster system or lose herself trying to emancipate herself. 

So. That was that settled. And Steph was grateful. They study for finals together all spread out on Cass' new, big bed. Tim and his brothers--Cass's brothers too now--stampede in the halls like wild bulls, and they giggle as they hear screeching when the baby inevitably trips over a lego Tim's left in his way. 

Cass always winces though, just a bit, when they go to settle on the bed. Her mattress is still new and plushy, and every time Steph goes to lay on it, her back pops in a few spots along with her hips. It's loud more than it hurts, feels like nothing more than popping your knuckles after writting a long essay. Sometimes it feels good, even, if it's a spot that's been bothering her during the day. But Cass' body doesn't do that, nor does Tim's when he comes in with a snack and complaints about his own school day. 

* * *

Steph gets a job when summer comes. It's nothing fancy, just a receptionist-type gig. It's fun work, even if her coworkers are overly intrusive and excessively catty. She just puts her head down and tries to live without getting pulled into the drama. 

If she resents them for it, then that's for herself and Tim and Cass to know. 

Her hours are long, but she still goes to see her friends when she isn't too exhausted. They've worked it out so she can work full time in the summer, and after school part-time during the other seasons. And that's exhausting and overwhelming but it's _fine_ because she has to save for college somehow, right? And she's so looking forward to that, has _always_ looked forward to that escape from Gotham. Her chance to go and _live._

The thing is, she has to do a lot of lifting, at her job. By the time August comes round her shoulders ache and feel as though they're grinding in their sockets. 

She only tells Cass and Tim, because when she'd mentioned it to any adults in passing, they'd laughed and told her she was too young to hurt, at fifteen. 

* * *

Things get worse from there. 

Turns out, fifteen is a hard age to be. Fifteen year olds are mean with sharp tongues and pointy elbows. Steph tries at first, but since she has to work after school she can't join clubs and doesn't really ever have time to just casually hang out anymore. People learn to stop asking, and she tries not to let it bother her. 

Her hands start aching again in the late fall, by the time winter proper rolls around, she hardly has the motivation to write notes anymore. But her classes are hard and she _needs_ her grades to stay up. For college. 

Sometimes, when Cass isn't too busy with her new art friends, she sneaks Steph warming packets. They loosen her fingers, and help keep the pain at bay. 

But it's only sometimes, because _Cass_ doesn't have the same responsibilities that Steph has. Which is fine. They still talk, Cass is still her best friend. She might not be Cass'. But that was to be expected. She and Tim live together now, are closer than ever. And she spends the night over there half the time anyways, because her mom isn't usually home and when she is they're always getting into fights. 

Other parts of her life are getting worse too. She remembers, in the vague way any teenage girl does, that she hated getting her first period. It was gross and it hurt, and she'd tucked herself up in her bed panicking over it that first day. But when she reaches fifteen she comes to the startling realization that since the age of thirteen she's had one maybe... every third month? And that's fine, hormones and what not, she'll regulate as she gets older. But when there is one coming she can feel it in her bones. Her ovaries cramp as she ovulates, and her hips become especially loose and sore. And if it wasn't for Cass, petting her hair worriedlied as she laid scrunched around a hot pad, she'd have thought it was normal. 

* * *

Life moves on. 

Junior year is better. She does well on her ACTs, not perfect, but a 30 on her first try. 32s in Reading and Language, 30 in Science, 29 in Math. It'll have to be good enough, she decides, because unlike Cass and Tim she can't really afford to take it more than once, and her inconsistent/flakey coworkers make it hard to request time off. 

She finishes almost all her requirements to graduate, and thinks about doing so early. But then she'd miss Tim and Cass, who are enjoying high school to it's fullest extent, so she doesn't. 

That winter, Cass gets a heated blanket. Steph almost purrs the first time her friend turns it on, the heat seeping into places that Steph hadn't even _realized_ were sore. 

* * *

A few things happen that December. 

After a few rounds of arguments between Steph and her mom, she finally goes to see a doctor. He tells her she has scholiosis and wide hips that are messing up the alignment of her knees, that's all. She isn't sure she believes him, because he tells her all this in that placating, annoying old-white-man voice. 

She also is forced into getting a car when her mom makes an agreement with a friend without telling Steph. She nearly cries when her bank account is drained of all her savings for a clunky Jeep that starts breaking down a week after she purchases it. 

But at least it's safe. 

Safer than several of Bruce's tiny fast sport cars, which they all find out crumple like a coke can on impact. It comes on an icy day, when a drunk man in a mini van runs a red. He's fine, because alcohol always loosens people up and why _wouldn't he be fine_ , and it makes Steph see red from the moment she picks up Tim's call and hears Cass crying on the other end because Dick and Dami are in the hospital because _they_ weren't drunk and loose and _they aren't ok._

She drives herself over to their house where they all crush against each other, and against their other brother Jason who has gone white and silent in a way she isn't used to. All these years the older boys had seemed infallible. She'd gotten countless head pats and teasing advice and pulls to her ponytails from these boys and had, in some ways, forgotten that she wasn't part of the family at all. 

A few days later she's still there, in the kitchen helping Jason and Alfred bake a cake, when Dick comes home. He'd been lucky, they'd been told, just some bruised lungs, minor trauma. He scoops them all into his arms and cries into their hair, and for a moment she feels awkward, but mostly she feels like family, so she cries too. 

Damian doesn't come home until after school starts again. He'd been on the side of the car that had been the initial impact point, and several spots in his spine had effectively been shattered. But his mom is involved with some fancy medical people and his dad is _Bruce Wayne,_ so instead of a life of paralysis he's given cutting-edge prosthetics in his _spine._ After a while more, he starts to slowly move again, looking less and less like a kicked puppy and more and more like the little gremlin child she's long since known to be her little brother. 

* * *

That spring when she and Cass try to study for finals, they realize they're in entirely different classes. It's late when they finally give up, nearing two in the morning, and their bodies are heavy with the dread over their nearing AP exams. 

When they finally head up to Cass' room Steph hears her knees and hips protest the whole way up and groans loudly at the top of the stairs. Jason pokes his head out of his room to glare at her and she flips him off, knuckles popping at the sudden movement. He snorts, Cass does not, narrowing her eyes. 

"Is it getting _worse_?" 

"Dunno," Steph shrugs. "Hard to keep track anymore. I can always tell you when it's about to rain though, I could make up a whole percussion section in an orchestra." 

Cass takes her hand and gently rubs at her fingers until they enter her room and find Damian stretched out over her heated blanket. Steph giggles behind her fingers as Cass shoos him away like he's a grumpy little kitten, and she gives him a sympathetic little pat on the head as he's hearded towards his own room. 

They settle in for the night, and Steph thinks Cass is asleep until warm arms tighten around her and the other girl buries her head in her shoulder. "I don't think you're ok, Steph." 

In the morning, they stare at each other awkwardly, coffee in their hands and sleep in their eyes until Tim walks in. Steph tries to get up to say hello, only for the symphony that is her body to protest the movement. Tim stops and stares in horror, and when she turns her neck there's a loud pop from just below her skull and then a smaller one in her jaw. The spinal one doesn't hurt, but her jaw does, and she tries not to make any noise. Outside the sky is dark and lighting crackles. Figures. 


	2. Chapter 2

Tim and Cass are more proactive in trying to figure out what's wrong with her than Steph herself is. Hyperelastic Ehlers-Danlos is Tim's best guess (and, while she'll readily admit that her best friend is a gremlin, he is a _clever_ gremlin) but it turns out that when she brings up her symptoms to her general practitioner, he laughs it off. 

"You looked that up," he shakes his fingers at her. "There's not much of a treatment other than pain meds and physical therapy. Fishing for oxy or for codeine won't work here, young lady."

Tim's furious, when she relays the story with a laugh.

It's funny, because she can't tolerate most restricted pain medications anyways. She'd learned the hard way when she'd gotten her wisdom teeth removed. The day after Steph had thought she was dying, and if she hadn't been staying with Tim because her mom didn't have the time to stay and watch her, if Dick hadn't found it odd that _she_ of all people would willing miss _breakfast,_ she wasn't sure what would have happened.

Tim doesn't seem to see the humor. 

Steph shrugs anyways, because does it really make a difference? She did actually read the printouts Tim had made for her and... well. The doctor was right about treatment. It wasn't much different than what she was already doing. 

* * *

This is going to be their last summer before they all disperse for college. Steph knows it. She mourns it, because she spends the summer working at a veterinary hospital, since the receptionist gig comes to an end when they don't want a full-time worker. Every night her knees and back and hands and shoulders ache, because the work is intense and practically pulling her apart. 

But unlike her (beautiful, wonderful, worthy of it all) friends, she doesn't have a billionaire dad to help her pay for college. 

Most nights she's too tired to make it all the way to their house. She collapses on her own bed, in an apartment that's always too quiet and too empty as her mom works the night shift, and she pops an ibuprofen.

Even if she could go over, she shouldn't. They've got a new brother, a teen just like the rest of them had been. His name is Duke, and he's a total sweetheart, but he's still scared and adjusting. Stephanie knows where she's not wanted, and there's no way that Mr. Wayne wants her around their family right now. 

One Sunday night (her one day off, unless she has to go help walk dogs when the clinic is closed, which she usually does because she lives closest and no one else wants to) (it's the day after the close of a 59 hour week, because at 18 she's an adult, but they've been skimping her overtime and she doesn't know what to do, and she knows she's about to rinse repeat again this upcoming week) there's a knock at her door. She groans, pulls her aching body out of bed and looks through the peekhole before swining the door open with a frown. 

It's Jason and Dick. The former looks red and splotchy, the latter a bone-deep tired, and Steph knows the signs of a family fight and it's fall-out. She's witnessed plenty, at the Wayne house. So she lets them shuffle in, humming when Jason asks to use her kitchen and starts to stress bake. She lets them rant and tire themselves out and melt into her couch once Jay's pulled the bread out of the oven.

She admits she isn't sure why they came to _her_ of all people. It makes them fall silent. 

"I guess we forgot," Jason finally says slowly, not meeting her eyes. "We forgot that you're not _technically_ our sister. It's been weird, without you always hanging around the house."

It's the closest they'll get to saying that they missed her. But it makes her eyes prick, because she's missed them too, of course. It's been a lonely summer, because all she's had has been the group chat. Sometimes she knows she's forgotten that she isn't a part of their family too. 

Jason starts rubbing her shoulders as they all sit in the silence. Except he presses a little too hard, and her right shoulder pops out of socket. He screams a bit (and she does too, because she's still not used to this pain yet, it had started just this summer but clearly is going to be a lifelong problem, since this is the third time this month and it's only the 13th) and quickly swaps places with Dick, who calmly helps her pop it back into place. 

He's had a lot of practice, since he's been dealing with the inevitable outfall of having been a competitive gymnast in his teenage years. The eldest boy rubs a menthol creme over the shoulder and Jason hands her a slice of the lemon bread as an apology. 

* * *

School starts again, and Steph ends up spending almost all her free time working or studying. She spends a lot of time during the day spacing out and leaning havily into Cass. She misses the worried looks her companion keeps giving her, too focused on the comfort and warmth she gets when she leans into her hugs. 

The time for college applications comes and goes, and Steph sends out a wide range of applications. But a sinking pit in her stomach doesn't make her very hopeful. She knows her transcript looks good, but it doesn't feel like enough.

Sure enough, she gets a mostly negative response, but Gotham U sends an acceptance letter, and it'll do. But it's expensive. It's the cheapest of the actual universities, but it's still expensive because of the over inflated cost of higher education in the US. Steph fights with her mom more. They offer her some scholarships, but not enough for the full cost of tuition, and her mom refuses to help her take out loans, and she can't do it on her own. 

Steph cries when she realizes this means she'll have to stay home and attend the local community college. It's free for kids in the city, so long as they keep their grades up and do volunteer work. If she hadn't worked so hard, taken so many advanced classes, it would've been fine. As it is, it makes her feel like all her hard work had been for nothing. It feels like other students who had spent their time partying and goofing off are going off to a real university, and why did she do so much and work so hard only to get so little? 

Cass and Tim hold her between them after a particularly stressful worknight. One of her favorite dogs from work had developed cancer and it all feels like it's too much. Cass has been accepted to her third choice. She'll be leaving for DC with plans to study abroad in Hong Kong in the second semester, and Steph is happy for her but also devastated and incredibly jealous, which just makes her feel worse. She should only feel happy, because she adores Cass and it isn't fair for her to have these horrible feelings. Tim has been accepted to all the schools he'd applied to, but hadn't committed to anything yet. 

Damian pads in quietly, his own cat clutched tightly to his chest as he watches them. Eventually, when they've all calmed down, he climbs up onto their laps and burrows his head into her stomach. It's very cat-like and makes her laugh as she pulls her fingers through his hair. The room seems a bit lighter, when they can laugh like that. 

* * *

Steph and Cass take Tim to prom with them. He hadn't wanted to go to his own because he's been to enough of his own school's dances to know that it'll end up being a mosh pit with bad music and lots of drugs and alcohol. 

Theirs is nice though. It's a small school, and Steph had been in the prom committee (she and Damian had made the flower crowns used to crown Prom King and Queen, and now she has a cute pic of the little boy scrunching his nose grumpily as she makes him model the Queen's crown). 

They all get ready together, and Steph is happy because she'd actually saved up for a new, proper prom dress, and for once as she curls her hair and applies her makeup, she actually feels like maybe she's as pretty as Cass and Tim. Like maybe she actually _does_ belong with them. 

Bruce and Dick take pictures of all them, and then a few more of just Cass and Tim. Jason and Damian tell her that she looks nice, and it makes her feel warm. 

It rains that night and her joints protest any movement, loudly, so dancing isn't fun for here. But someone brought giant jenga, and giant connect-4, so they play games and smack each other with loose balloons, and it's absolutely perfect. 

She sleeps over that night, even though she has work the next day, and it's the first time in a long time that she feels at peace.

* * *

Summer comes and Bruce is fighting with Tim, because he still hasn't committed to a school and time is running out. Steph can't understand it either, because he literally has all the opportunities she has only dreamed of. He doesn't try to explain it either, which is frustrating and causes friction unlike they've ever had before. 

Finally he admits to her that he doesn't _want_ to go to school. What he wants is to work with Bruce, he wants to learn on the field what he needs to do to eventually take over the company his biological parents had left behind. He already hangs out at WE all the time, and knows a lot of the inner workings of the departments. He's burned out with school, and he doesn't want to leave home quite yet. 

She sighs, lovingly, and admits that while she doesn't understand it, if it's what he wants then she's down to be there for him. And it isn't like she'll be leaving town anytime soon anyways, so it's actually rather comforting to know that he'll be here too. 

And although she doesn't realize that this the truth until she says it, it is. Steph had been dreading being left alone, and her heart sings to know that Tim is staying here with her.

"You know," she hums one lazy summer night, when she's actually gotten home, and then over to the manor at a decent time. "We could find an apartment together, leave home without going too far."

Tim peers up at her from under his bangs. "Or you could finally just move in here. You know Alfred and B have a room set aside for you, right?"

No, actually. She did not know that.

He laughs at her expression (as does Cass, who is going through his things to decide what she's stealing to take to school with her, she's already stolen several of Steph's things). There's a guest room, just a few doors down. It's one that she's used regularly on the nights where she was too frustrated with Cass's snores or Tim kicking out in his sleep. Apparently it had been set aside as 'her' room for quite some time. 

Steph hadn't a clue. Her eyes prickle a bit, and she ducks her head into Titus's fur, the big drool machine curled up happily on her and the bed and Tim (why Bruce thought Damian needed a dog bigger than he was she would never know). 

It's easy enough to convince her mom to let her move in. The manor is a bit farther from school and work, but she can commute downtown via carpool with Bruce and Tim as they go into work. Moving in is somewhat unremarkable, except that she has to fight Dick and Jason to carry in some of her own boxes. One of them does pull out her shoulder though, so she finally gives in. 

When everything is settled, she finds an unfamiliar blanket on her bed. It's her favorite shade of purple, and she can feel familiar wires when she runs her hand over it. 

"We're glad you're home," a note on the pillows reads. It has everyone's names on it, and she snuffles into her hands as she flops down and lets the heat seep into the muscles around her bad shoulder. 

* * *

Winter is bad. 

Classes are fine. Not great. Not by any means, but she's getting her credits. Tim is adjusting well, which is more than she can say for herself. Between work and studying, she hasn't made any friends or acquaintances. There's no time to join any student groups, despite the fact that she thinks she'd rather enjoy student government. 

On days where she only has classes (work has finally agreed to pull back on her hours while she's in school--huzzah!) she drives in with Bruce and Tim. She typically only ends up coming home with Bruce, as Tim gets distracted by whatever project he's working on that day. The stubborn man pretends he doesn't care for her still, but after all these years she recognizes his belligerant care. A stubborn old mule, that one. So she teases and pokes at him and riles him up. It's fun, and despite what he says she can tell he enjoys it.

On days she has work, she drives herself to and from. It's nice, she decides, not to have to pay for gas as often. 

On weekends, now she doesn't have to drive in because she's not the closest to the clinic anymore. Instead, she starts helping Duke and Damian with homework. The three of them settle in the den, tv playing some nature documentary at a low volume to provide white noise. Duke likes having someone to double check his math (it's always flawless though, because there isn't a Wayne child in existence who doesn't excel at anything and everything they try). Damian sometimes still has trouble with English, particularly in breaking down complex sentence structures. If Jason is around, he'll help a bit, since he's the English major and speaks Farsi (Dami's first language). 

Lots of nights, her muscles seize and spasm painfully. The worst spots are the arches of her feet, and the backs of her knees. But on occasion there's an odd muscle in her left hip that'll do wonky things, and her calves and thighs are rarely happy when she goes to stretch in the morning--triggering excruciating cramps. 

On nights when the cold seeps in a little too much in the big house, she'll be joined by Damian, Alfred the Cat, and Titus, as they pile onto her electric blanket, heat cranked up all the way. It's been ages now, since his spinal implant, but she knows it hurts in the Gotham winter cold. 

There isn't a single part of her body that doesn't hurt now. She has problems at work when her hands stop being able to close all the way. Various bottles slip out of her grip, and scruffing cats for more than a quick moment becomes problematic. Her collection of braces grows exponentially, and during winter break, when she has a day off, she manages to get Dick to teach her how to use kinesthetic tapes for her knees and shoulders. 

Cass doesn't come home over break, busy assisting one of her profs with research as a freshman, which Steph thinks is just wild. But they facetime, Cass and her and Tim, and it almost feels like old times again.

They do this in the livingroom, fireplace blazing. It's where she's been spending most of her time at home. Tim had caught on just a few weeks previous, to the sad truth that it's just too painful for her to get up and down the stairs more than once or twice a day. Her knees and hips give out too easily, and she's had more than one bad tumble, resulting in bruised ribs and pride.

* * *

The best part of living in the manor is the bathroom. There's a nice tub that she finds herself taking advantage of, on the really bad days. The boyancy lifts and supports her legs and shoulders, the heat seeps into her worn muscles and ligaments. 

One night, she's when she's particularly plagued by cramps and attacks and fits, she drags in her laptop and a mug of cider and fills up the tub. As she's waiting, her left foot arch cramps painfully, and it brings her to tears. It doesn't help that she's been ovulating, the familiar cramps in her abdomen making it feel as though there's extra pressure on her hips. She'd read once that it was due to the hormone cycles making the ligaments even looser than normal. 

Steph remembers once, reading about the involvement of different organ systems with Ehlers-Danlos. 

As far as she can tell, for now, it's just her reproductive system, if that really classifies as "organ involvement." 

But as she stares at the screen, thinks about the things that could be involved someday, she realizes that there's probably a 10 year prognosis for people like her. She doesn't have an official diagnosis, sure, but even her general practitioner had agreed that she had some sort of hyper-elastic disorder, last time she'd seen him. 

It's probably not a bad prognosis, since she _hasn't_ had organ involvement. But... 

But she's only just turned 20. 

If she looks, she'll need to tell Tim and Cass. She should know. _They_ should know. She isn't sure that she _wants_ to know. She doesn't want to think about the fact that there's a chance the ligaments holding together her insides might not hold together. That there's a chance she might not make it to 30. 

It's the first time that all of this has felt scary.

She cries a bit, as she types her question into the search engine. Her fingers hesitate, just over the enter button.

She closes her eyes and thinks about it. What she does is for the best. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you knew you had a prognosis, but there wasn't a treatment, would you look?
> 
> I don't know if Steph did or not. I'll let you decide. Tell me what you think she does, if you'd like. 
> 
> There are lots of elements of this based off my own experiences and problems. This isn't meant to represent the experience of everyone who has hyper-elastic disorders. Some things are my direct problems, some the problems of my mom (who has the same disorder).
> 
> Take care of yourselves. <3 Stay safe.

**Author's Note:**

> This was going to be all one chapter, but then I realized that the next few years are gonna be a doozy. Best to start splitting stuff up.


End file.
